Changing Asian Business Systems: Globalization, Socio-Political Change, and Economic Organization
ISBN: 9780191795886
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: International Business Political Economy;

This book brings together scholars from different disciplines to examine the evolving patterns of economic organisation across Northeast and Southeast Asia against the backdrop of market liberalisation, political changes and periodic economic crises since the 1990s. More specifically, it provides an interdisciplinary account of variations, continuities and changes in the institutional structures that shape business systems and practices and govern innovation patterns, together with analyses of their impact on established systems of economic coordination and control.

In line with this analytical focus, the project has three different yet interrelated objectives. In the first place, building on the comparative business systems framework, it elucidates the nature and properties of business system changes and continuities in Asia since the 1990s. Second, it develops novel theoretical propositions concerning the primary causes of these changes and continuities, representing a collective effort to theorise the changing varieties of Asian economic organisation. Finally, it explores the causal pathways through which the changing institutional structures governing business systems have shaped and reshaped innovation strategies and trajectories across the national, sectoral and firm levels of analysis.


Richard Whitley, Emeritus Professor of Organisational Sociology, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester,Xiaoke Zhang, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester

Richard Whitley is Emeritus Professor of Organizational Sociology at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Recent authored and edited books include: Capitalisms and Capitalism in the Twenty First Century (2012); Reconfiguring Knowledge Production (2010); Business Systems and Organizational Capabilities (2007); Changing Capitalisms? (2005); The Multinational Firm (2001); Divergent Capitalisms (1999) (all published by Oxford University Press), and The Changing Governance of the Sciences (2007) (Springer); Competing Capitalisms (2002) (Edward Elgar). In 1998-99 he served as the Chair of the European Group for Organizational Studies and in 1999-2000 was the President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-economics. In 2007 he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.


Xiaoke Zhang is a Professor at Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester. His major research interests are in political economy and comparative management studies, with a regional focus on East Asia. Before he joined Manchester Business School, he worked and taught at the Universities of Amsterdam and Nottingham. His publications include East Asian Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2012), The Political Economy of Capital Market Reforms in Southeast Asia (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), International Financial Governance under Stress (Cambridge University Press 2003), and The Changing Politics of Finance in Korea and Thailand (Routledge 2002).

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